PHILADELPHIA -- When it comes to players who were once property of the Flyers and are playing huge dividends for their new team, Patrick Sharp is at the top of the list.

Tied for fifth in the NHL in goals and a top-15 scorer in general, Sharp was traded away to Chicago for Matt Ellison.

Remember him? Don't worry if you don't. You're far from alone.

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On the flip side, the Flyers have a couple of trump cards that panned out brilliantly, but none may be better than Ville Leino.

He's the gift from the Detroit Red Wings -- a team that rarely misjudges homegrown talent -- that keeps on giving.

The Flyers plucked Leino last February from Detroit in exchange for Ole-Kristian Tollefsen.

Remember him?

All Leino has done since he arrived is become an unexpected playoff hero, tie an NHL record for points by a rookie in a postseason and develop into the dangerous right wing on the best of the Flyers' three scoring lines.

A puck-possession wizard, Leino has made more waves with his playmaking ability than his scoring touch. But for one night, against a plucky and underrated Nashville Predators team, Leino turned the tables.

Leino scored two goals, including the game-winner on a pretty rising backhander that seems like it became extinct about the same time as the set-shot in basketball, as the Flyers outlasted the Predators in a well-played game on both ends, 3-2 at Wells Fargo Center.

It was Leino's first two-goal game of his career and it couldn't have come at a better time as the Flyers again refused to lose in consecutive games, something that hasn't happened since the last game before and the first game after the Christmas break.

For Leino, it was the reaffirmation of his status as one of the key offensive players on a deep Flyers' team. Although he had been maintaining his spot as the fifth leading scorer on the team, Leino hadn't felt himself in recent games -- certainly not Tuesday in Tampa -- and even before the All-Star break.

Thursday was a different story.

"I feel like my self-confidence hasn't been there and the work ethic hasn't been as hard as I want it to be so I just have to carry on and bring it hard next game too," Leino said. "(Confidence) is all my game, really. I haven't been playing that well lately, but today I played the way I wanted to."

Leino scored a power-play goal in the second period by jamming in a loose puck at the side of the net, then netted the game-winner on a spin-o-rama in the slot that he finished with a rising backhander to beat Nashville goalie Anders Lindback over the glove.

"That was instinct," Leino said. "I felt that he was on my right side so I turned right away. I knew there was empty space there and as soon as I turned I knew I had to get it up. It turned out well.

"That was pretty much the only spot I thought would work. I put it right on the backhand. It worked out well."

It was the result of another savvy tactical move by coach Peter Laviolette.

With a television timeout coming a little later than usual, Laviolette knew he needed to create a little offense, so he went back to Leino instead of Nik Zherdev on the wing with Claude Giroux and Jeff Carter.

"I thought Ville had a strong game, strong with his skating and strong on the puck," Laviolette said. "I thought time was ticking down and we're looking for something so we have a faceoff down there. I thought with the break that he had ... he ended up catching some wind so I put him back out there. I think it was more of a hunch than anything else."

Those Laviolette hunches seem to work more and more frequently, and they seem to jump-start players too. Consider how hot Carter and Giroux have been since flipping them at center and wing.

Giroux, who had a pair of assists, has points in eight of the last nine games (three goals, 10 assists) and Carter finished with a goal and two assists for his seventh three-point game this season.

"It was pretty much a track meet the whole game," Carter said. "I think that's the way they play, they seem to wear teams down and win late games like that. I thought we fell asleep in the second, regrouped, came out hard in the third and came out with two points."